Contestant application, “Working Title”

That’s the prospective name of the game show, though I haven’t the slightest idea how that might apply to smart people. If it means they have a job that requires strong intellectual capacities, then I’m already out of the running. If it just means that they’re making something up as they go along, maybe it’s worth sending in my home tape and application after all. If nothing else, I got a few laughs out of it. Continue reading “Contestant application, “Working Title””

Shawn Bakken, come on down!

Honestly, I had been a little skeptical of networking before. I’m not the kind of person to drop my name, job, favorite position, rank and serial number at the drop of a hat—I prefer much more casual, social connections. To my surprise, one of those turned into what could be the opportunity of a lifetime… or maybe just something to tell the grandkids… or maybe something that could give me cancer of the fingernail, for all I know. We’ll all have to wait for a while to find out the result. Unless it’s cancer—that takes a while to diagnose, especially if I keep it trimmed down at the source. Continue reading “Shawn Bakken, come on down!”

It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to!

Congratulations to me—my birthday was on Tuesday (October 19th). I’m now 28 years old; counting in days, that means I’m… God, I’m a fuckin’ geezer already.

28 is such a blah number, too. It’s not like turning

– 18 (when it becomes legal for you to… vote)
– 21 (legal to get drunk in a bar without a fake ID)
– 25 (a quarter of a century)
– 30, 40, 50 and all the big round numbers after that.

It’s just 28. What can you say about that? “Hey, I’m 28! That’s 7 x 4! Pretty cool, huh?”

Aside from that, I didn’t have a party (I did have dinner with my parents at T.G.I. Friday’s—the people working there sang and gave me a free birthday sundae) and I don’t feel like crying, so maybe you should just disregard the subject heading altogether.

Day 4 in Los Angeles

This was it: the GRAND MASTERFUL SERIOUSLY COOL FESTIVAL PREMIERE OF THE BEST SHOW IN THE UNIVERSE, THE WAZOO SHOW! (It’s already been world-premiered twice now—there had to be some other way to demonstrate its significance…) It was the culmination of our trip, the results of all our “hard” work and the chance to show off how sweet we were to more people than local Minnesotans. I think it went fairly well. People were laughing, so it couldn’t have been too bad. Continue reading “Day 4 in Los Angeles”

Day 3 in Los Angeles

Have you ever had the housekeeping staff walk into your hotel room while you were sleeping? Have they ever cleaned the bathroom without waking you up? Have they ever wandered around the corner and seen you rolling around in your bed naked? Well, I didn’t have to worry about that last one—Matthew came back from breakfast and asked the cleaning lady to leave before she finished up in the bathroom. (Plus I was wearing boxers, but two and a half out of three is still pretty bad…) Continue reading “Day 3 in Los Angeles”